Joyce Jennings of Detroit waits in line to go into City Council chambers to speak up against the Hantz Woodlands on Tuesday. / JESSICA J. TREVINO/Detroit Free Press

Written by

John Gallagher, John Wisely and Matt Helms

Detroit Free Press Staff Writers

More than a mere land sale, the Detroit City Council’s 5-4 vote Tuesday to sell about 1,500 lots for the Hantz Woodlands project keeps alive the idea that Detroit will serve as a worldwide center of urban innovation for post-industrial cities.

In recent years, hundreds of artists, architects, academics, filmmakers, urban planners and students have flocked to Detroit to see urban innovation at work. The Hantz proposal, billed as the world’s largest experiment in urban agriculture, was a big part of that global interest, receiving worldwide publicity.

Proposed almost four years ago as Hantz Farms, the project now will have a chance to demonstrate if a large-scale blight removal and reforestation project will help or hinder Detroit’s recovery.

Councilman Ken Cockrel Jr., a “yes” vote on the deal, said urban agriculture isn’t a silver bullet to fix Detroit’s problems, but that it is an important component of redevelopment.

“A ‘no’ vote would have sent the message to the world that Detroit isn’t really serious about urban agriculture,” Cockrel said.

Council President Pro-Tem Gary Brown said that he voted to approve the sale over the objections of opponents because he had heard from a “silent majority” of residents in the east-side area who favor the project. “They’d rather have trees than blight and abandoned buildings,” Brown said.

Of the vocal opponents, Brown said: “Very few of them talked about the Hantz Farms project. It was mostly about a dysfunctional city government that makes it hard for them to buy” land themselves.

Mayor Dave Bing, whose Detroit Works project has suggested urban agriculture as a redevelopment tool, said it’s important for city leaders to keep an open mind to alternative uses of land.

“We have over 60,000 vacant parcels of land in the city,” Bing said. “We’ve got a hell of a lot to offer. We have no issue selling the land to anybody. ... It will help us with blight.” He added: “We’ve got to get away from everybody saying, ’You’re just taking advantage of us.’”

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John Hantz, a Detroit resident and president and CEO of Hantz Group, a Southfield-based network of financial services companies, issued a statement after the vote saying he was “greatly pleased with today’s decision by the Detroit City Council to approve the development agreement allowing us to contribute to creating more liveable Detroit neighborhoods.”

But Lottie Spady, an environmental activist in Detroit, posted on Twitter that the “exact same group that voted in favor of the consent agreement just approved Hantz land grab.”

Hantz Woodlands is a plan to buy about 1,500 city-owned parcels, or around 140 acres of land, for about $520,000 and plant hardwood trees on them as a beautification project. The parcels are almost all vacant lots, although Hantz has committed to demolishing at least 50 blighted buildings that remain.

The city acquired the parcels through tax foreclosure as owners and residents abandoned the sites. The city controls an estimated 60,000 vacant lots through tax foreclosure.

The lots being sold to Hantz Woodlands are in an area bounded by Van Dyke on the west, St. Jean on the east, Mack on the north, and Jefferson on the south. Although the Indian Village district lies within that area, no lots in Indian Village are included.

Once the sale is closed, the Hantz project can begin trash removal from the lots and begin demolishing some of the several dozen blighted buildings that remain. Actual tree-planting could begin in the spring.

The council’s vote came in the face of vocal opposition from some of the city’s leading nonprofit community activists, who portrayed the sale as a corporate land grab. They complained that ordinary Detroit residents had tried for years to overcome city inertia and to buy lots, and that Hantz was getting special treatment.

This criticism reached a crescendo at a public hearing Monday night in which hundreds of residents vented their anger at the project and at council members for considering it.

At Tuesday’s council meeting, the Detroit Association of Realtors didn’t support or oppose the plan but did ask the council to wait 90 days before deciding so there could be more information.